One Nation Under God

Dear Friends,

This Thursday, our country celebrates its 248th birthday. How do we honor our nation which has been designed as a place of liberty and justice for all, yet has seemingly lost so much of its singular focus? Some would argue that the United States never did have a clear sense of solidarity. Mountains of evidence of inclusion and exclusion exist, but so do even higher mountains of people working together for the common good, for ideals that are worth our personal dedication and for harmony. God has been in the mix. “One nation under God,” we say in the pledge of allegiance. But whose God? Everybody’s God. And how much do we personally and as a people recognize God in our midst?

On this coming holiday, let’s be open to and invite one another to:

Be who we are, who we say we are. Sit a bit and think about the goodness we have seen and known, the good people we are. We are so often negative in our outlook and words. BE.

Be real. Honest and sincere, not cheaters who cut corners every chance we get.

Be aware. We have periods of ebb and flow, as individuals and as a nation. We surge toward an idea, a leader, a style, a song, but then we flow on, or those things that grabbed us yesterday flow on. What is lasting, anyway?

Be human. That means to recognize goodness and vulnerability in ourselves and others. As Vespatia says to her husband Victor in Anne Perry’s A Christmas Gathering, “Can you really forgive, if you have no need to be forgiven?” So much forgiveness and reconciliation is necessary in our land.

Be careful. Respect boundaries. Treat others’ gifts and lives with honor.

Be connected. Our blood can be used for other people when they need it. Sharing blood is a symbol of all the things we share.

Be humorous. Pope Francis recently told 105 comedians from many nations that “they had the power to spread peace and smiles.” The Pope highlighted “the unique role of laughter in bringing people together in the face of conflict.” We can’t all be comedians, but we can spark laughter instead of anger.

Be quiet. We don’t have to have the last word, or a handy rebuttal to every argument. We do need to speak when needed and to know when not to.

Be happy. Happy that you are here and that you belong to a land that is feeding so many parts of the world as well as caring for its own. We can rejoice because we live in the land of the free because of the brave.

Happy 4th and happy 248th!

~>~>~>~>~>~>~>~>~>~>>~>~>~>~>~

On another topic, after 11 years of weekly blogs, I am happy to welcome as a writing partner Sister Susan Schantz. A Sister of Saint Joseph with whom I have lived and worked over many years, I know the convictions of her mind and heart, her talent for writing and staying power. Susan and I will be alternating weeks beginning next week. I am looking to her insights for my own personal refreshment as well sharing them with you.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Getting Through the Storms of Life

Dear Friends,

I once read that in any large gathering at least 25% of those present are dealing with some serious situation in life. It might be health-related, a marriage difficulty, challenges of their children, mortgage payments, job security or, if you’re young, challenges with parents. You may be facing some difficulty that seems insurmountable. That’s why today’s readings may resonate with you.

Today’s first and third readings are about the storms that threaten life. We read of upheavals in the sea. In the Hebrew Bible, only God had power over the sea. We see this in Job, where God directs the movement of the stormy sea:

Thus far shall you come and no farther.

Here shall your proud waves be stilled.

After the storm described in today’s Gospel, Jesus showed God’s very power over the sea. After the storm, the psalmist concludes with awe “God hushed the storm into a gentle breeze.”

The storms in these readings catch listeners’ attention. They deal often, if not daily, with personal, communal storms. God may seem to be asleep in the Gospel, silent and indifferent to the fear of the moment. Afterwards, the people who experience the storms experience new potential, fresh starts, new insights.

Knowing and believing that God is present in our most ferocious storms can give us an unexpected serenity, a calm that no storm can disturb.

The point of these readings can’t simply be that God will create smooth sailing for us if only we ask. Job knew better than that, as did Mark, the writer of today’s Gospel. So do we.

We like immediate responses to our prayer, but to live through the aftermath of storms, we need patience. Patience in our longing and patience in our belonging. Patience in our actions and in our waiting. Patience in our minds and our impulses.

The storms of life that engage us are sometimes interpersonal. Sometimes, we face life’s societal hardships, like the migrants fleeing from oppression in their homelands. Sometimes, our problems are daily hassles with the computer, with processing the next steps at work, small storms which are just too much for us to bear with equanimity.

In each storm that threatens to swamp us, here are a few things that might help:

Practice deep-breathing. Teach your body and mind to become calm when there is no calm around you.

Include God in your consciousness, for God does not abandon us as we are seemingly overwhelmed.

See your situation with new eyes. Treasure the residue of the storm.

Be grateful when the storm has passed.

Know this for sure. God doesn’t jump ship. God is your co-pilot as you steer the craft in the storm.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Our Gardener God

Dear Friends,

The idea of praying to “Our Gardener God’ is not uniquely mine. If you go to the web, you will find many images and articles about “Our Gardner God.” It is a way of welcoming God who creates, recreates and treasures our earth. Because it’s summer, whether we are outside or not, it seems right to pray to our “Gardener God,” for so God is.

In today’s first reading, Ezekiel lingers over our Gardener God who values the majestic cedars so much that He cuts a portion off and takes it to the mountains, where it will grow unchallenged, and welcome other creatures of the earth for countless generations.

Lavish, generous Gardener God!

No wonder Jesus describes the reign of God with parables taken from gardening and farming:
        The wheat and the weeds that grew up together
        The seed that produced 30, 60, 100–fold,
        and of course, today’s Gospel stories describing the reign of God as
        The seed scattered and left to grow on its own
        The mustard seed: tiny, tiny, so tiny - yet capable of immensity.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the lessons taught to me by scratch - gardeners. These patient images of God start seeds along about February or March, coaxing tough little seeds into life. Eventually, when they are judged sturdy enough, the fledgling plants are brought outside in the daytime to harden them.

Humanly speaking, I think God doesn’t want us to be hardened, but hearty and hardy. You and I are made hardy and hearty by God’s gardening.

Godness or God-likeness, grows in us almost imperceptibly, in weakness, poverty and smallness, like vulnerable plants. Such growth is a gift. Pure gift.

On this Father’s Day, I think of how men grow into fatherhood. God is their gardener, whether they perceive it or not. The work is slow and the questions are many. Some questions go unasked. Some can’t be answered except when life is seen in retrospect.

Children need fathers to help plant the seeds of truth-telling and respect for all people. Children need to know they are loved and yet there are times when their father needs to stand back and watch his children grow without him or in spite of him. Today, we bless the fathers who continually deepen who they are for their children. What do you best recall about your own father?

There are boundless life-lessons to learn from the garden and the farm - from our Gardener God who teaches us all two important lesson today:

        ~Growth happens slowly and imperceptibly and often goes unnoticed, but involves others.
        ~The result is bigger, more remarkable than we can imagine.

Today, let’s offer a confident work of thanks and praise to our Gardener God for creating, pruning, bringing forth fruit, sustaining our growth in life and the life of our world.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Seeing the Value in All Creation

Dear Friends,

The great holy days of spring are over, and our liturgical calendar moves into Ordinary Time. During these long, wide-open weeks until Advent, I like to explore other themes in the Christian life as well as ideas that run in currents through our culture.

Here’s one such thought that popped into my mind recently.

            What do these things have in common?
                        the quality of the wine at Cana
                        the birds of the air
                        the wildflowers
                        the barren fig tree.

Jesus, during His public ministry, paid attention to these apparently small matters in nature and life, which, in the grand scheme of things, were not life and death issues, not issues of exclusion or injustice. Jesus cared about people enough to seek them out, recognize His kinship with them, heal them, bring them to life literally and in new ways that stirred their being. But in His love and kindness, He also focused His attention on the ordinary, the insignificant, things that might otherwise be discarded, deemed irrelevant or crushed underfoot. Jesus knew that God, His Father, looked upon all creation and saw that it was good (Gen.1.31) and from Psalm 24 that “the earth is the Lord’s and all that it holds.” He knew from the Wisdom of Solomon that God, His Father, “loves all things that exist and spares all things” for they are His (Wisdom 24, 26). Jesus, who knew the Scriptures, treasured all creation as His Father did.

We love Jesus for the way He healed Bartimaeus and the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman, how He welcomed Dismas on the next cross over and Nicodemus who was skittish and uncertain about whether he could follow Jesus openly. But He also cared enough about bread, vineyards, lakes and fish to include them in His life and teachings. Jesus was not so people-centered that He missed the value of the rest of creation.

I like to think of the barren fig tree, revived and in full bloom, standing sentinel at the gate of heaven, a welcome to all who recognize the breadth of Jesus’ love for all creation.

Given what we are coming to know and love about Jesus, and His Father’s care for all creatures, will you, will I look at creation with new eyes this summer?

~ Sister Joan Sobala

*Image above is All Creation Sings His Praise, a painting by Jen Norton

The Blood of Christ Sustains the Flow of Life

Dear Friends,

Last week a story on the national news told of pregnant women with a life-endangering illness being saved by the infusion of whole blood. So much can be done when the component parts of blood are shared. But this crisis required whole blood.

I thought of “whole blood” when I started preparing for this week’s blog. When tragedy strikes, people give blood, which they associate with the gift of life.

Blood sustains the flow of life.

The Blood of Christ sustains the flow of life in the church and in the world.

A few weeks ago, a nurse practitioner from my insurance carrier came to do a home visit. After a series of routine tests, she wondered if I would allow her to take a test which measured whether there were differences in the blood flow in each of my arms and legs. I was curious, to say the least. Much to my delight, the graphs were identical for each appendage. The blood flowed consistently throughout my body.

Does the Blood of Christ flow consistently throughout the Church and the world? No. We know it doesn’t, because in some instances Christ is ignored, unwanted, misunderstood, rejected when understood. The whole Church and the whole world are inconsistent hosts for Christ who gives us His blood to sustain us and His Body to nourish us.

How do we come to value and cooperate with the truth of Christ’s Body and Blood as lifegiving for us? Certainly, and as often as possible, by coming to the Table of the Lord. But there’s more. As we plunge into our lives, day after day, we can work politically, economically, and socially to stanch the loss of lifeblood in the many clear and hidden ways that happen. We can work locally, nationally, and globally to enhance the flow of blood to all those people and places where the need is greatest. In this way, we become Christ for others. We bring Christ to others.

The Body and Blood of Christ are always given together and received together. Wherever people move in the world, Christ is there, offering His very self that we might live. We give Him to others when we act generously, speak lovingly, look upon others with love, treat them with reverence.

As we accept the call to receive Christ, we become what we receive. We become Christ, and give Him to others, hopefully without holding back. Christ says to us: “You share my life and my love when you do these things in memory of me.”

On this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, will you join me to pray in great thanks and reverence:

                    Bread of Life,
                    Jesus, Holy and Risen One,
                    Keep us as fresh as the bread we break
                    and the wine we pour,
                    that like these simple gifts
                    which become Your Body and Blood,
                    our lives may become a source of freshness
                    for all we meet.
                    Amen.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

A Circle of Kinship with God

Dear Friends,  

I just read an interview with Sister of St. Joseph Elizabeth Johnson, eminent theologian recently retired. Elizabeth tells that she had no intention of writing another book, but God had another idea. She was inspired to go the route of a book of meditations on God and the earth. Its major title is “Come, Have Breakfast,” drawing on the words of Jesus to his disciples, who met his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee after the Resurrection.  

Jesus invited them to breakfast, which he made himself, doing woman’s work with ease and divine/human dignity. 

Once again, Jesus breaks the mold of what we believe God does.  

“Everything we say about God is limited by our own finite experiences,” Elizabeth Johnson says. “God is infinite. So we have to keep breaking open our categories and letting our spirits soar into the actual mystery of God.” 

Ours is not the only generation which has stereotyped God, placing God in a distant place with words that render God unreachable -- all-mighty, ever-lasting and all-powerful, to mention a few. At the same time that we have relegated God to a distant heaven, people have created our own gods to worship. Wealth, fame, prestige, power and beauty rank high as cultural idols. We don’t need such gods. We need to make space for our humanity and space for the real God.  

Do you know the hymn that begins “Lord, You are the Center of My Life?” It evokes an intimate image of God’s presence and a truth that we welcome if we want to grow in faith. But the image of the disciples, sitting with Jesus at the seashore, offers an image we might not be used to. God joins us in the circle as we breakfast together while sitting on the earth by the sea. This does not place God in the center of our circle, where there is still a distance, but God next to us. God at our elbow. God stretching and reaching for another morsel of food. God eating fish and bread with us.  

We are in what Elizabeth Johnson calls a “circle of kinship” with God. God loves all people and all creation with a closeness that is immediate and unflagging. We are kin to one another and to God as we live, whether we are on the beach or in any other place. 

Today, Trinity Sunday, let’s celebrate God with us -- the real God and not our own version of God. Part of our circle of kinship. 

~ Sister Joan Sobala

* The photo above hangs over the altar at Our Lady of Lourdes in Brighton, NY.

The Voice of God, Heard by All

Dear Friends,

Rushing wind, spreading fire, the Spirit that enabled courage. All potent aspects of Pentecost.

Here’s one more to consider, namely that everyone heard Peter speaking in their own tongues – their everyday language.

There was no official language for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Not imperial Latin or universal Greek or local Aramaic or the language of the political/religious parties of Galilee and Judea.

Think about it! Everyone heard the voice of God through Peter in the language of the streets, the idioms they used, their nuances expressions, their slang. God is revealed on Pentecost as a God without borders – a God who rejects sameness as a rule for everyone. There is no one right way to speak, to be human or to be in touch with the living God. Everyone has a take on personally Who God Is and why we need to treasure and make the most of God-with-us. Everyone can ask questions of the Living God and of Jesus, the Risen One. Everyone has insights about God to share. Everyone can speak to God in his/her own tongue.

This breath-stopping thought about how God honors all existing languages in this Pentecost moment is not mine. It drifted into my computer from an unknown source and I have kept it because of its simple but profound insight. The anonymous author of the article that embodied this thought put it this way:

“On Pentecost, God gives the divine voice to the language 

of a bunch of nobodies and a crowd of commoners. 

It is an act of liberation, both for humankind and for God.”

Think about the ways nations have tried to suppress the language of conquered people. One language, those in power say – one language is all we need. Our language. Yet even in English, how many words come from conquered people, indigenous people, people who have been told their language is inferior and too difficult to learn. When language dies, culture dies. People whose culture dies lose heart.

Again quoting the unknown author of this insightful piece,

“Pentecost was a rebellion against those who would 

 restrict God to a single, respectable or official language, 

 of a single, righteous people or a single systematic theology. 

 Pentecost was a protest in which God refused to be silenced 

 by the language of the powerful. Instead, on Pentecost, 

 God spoke. And the people in the street understood.”

And then the people in the street spoke with the voice of God-reaching out to others in Word and Spirit – with the very conviction of God.

The people of Gaza and the Ukraine, the people of Haiti and other battle – weary countries cry out to the world with the voice of God.

On this Pentecost Day, may we hear the voice of God in them and wherever compassion and mercy are preached and lived. May our world be suffused with Pentecost fire, light, hearing and courage.

~ Sister Joan Sobala